Timeseed Coin Designs and Thesis Update
Timeseed Project Progress:
1) I have had a meeting with the head of ceramics at nyu and they were very helpful and will allow me to fire my coins.
2) I have investigated private ceramics studios and may join one in a month, in order to gain a diversity in coinage.
3) I have created three new distinct coin faces that I am excited about:
“evolution”,
“tankman”
“golden-ratio”
I also finished “solar order”
4) I have ordered a palmgren 1/2 tonne arbor press, in order to apply a massive amount of pressure to the clay. My hope is that this has the dual benefits of both insuring a high fidelity pressing, as well as maximizing the coin density.
5) I have researched and fully understand the rules for sending packages to us servicemen. The good news is that it only takes maximum of two weeks for a package to go from the east coast to Afghanistan.
Weak Spots:
1) I have yet i.d. my academic and celebrity, adventurer dispersors.
2) I have not had a chance to talk to clay in depth.
3) My experiences in 3D modeling programs have been fruitless todate.
4) I have serious concerns about the 3D mold idea after my talk with a ceramics professor. I will probably create positive coin faces as well as negative 3D molds. Another alternative is to send the design out to a fabricator to be milled from copper or a special type of low drag plastic.
Unity 3D: Time Dilation Demonstration
In a collaboration between myself and Robbie Tilton,
we used the Gametrak3D controller and Unity3D in order to simulate a natural world with time dilation controlled by user input. In this project, Robbie was Paul McCartney and I played the Role of John Lennon.
I created a custom texture map and painted the terrain in a top down orientation. I also created two custom grass billboards.
An in-game shot of the world at night.
I am really proud of this logarithmic cut off for the ambient day and night sounds.
The sounds of the appropriate time will rise and fade with the ascension and setting of the sun and the moon.
Thesis Proposal and Clarification
“Man needs to adapt to the landscape and to other beings, animals and human groups. And to communicate. To communicate by inscribing memories on specific, odd things like walls, pieces of wood…The invention of the figurative representation of animals, of man, of things is a way for humans to communicate with the future. A way of evoking the past and transmitting information by means better than language. Signs instead of oral communication. This invention still holds in our world today.”
Dr. Jean Michel Geneste Curator of the Lascaux cave and director of the French National Centre for Prehistory. (From the film “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”)
Time Seed Project: Thesis Motivation Clarification
I was asked to clarify my thesis concept the “Time Seed Project” in order to fully convey my motivation for this proposal. I made a fundamental error when presenting my thesis, I tried to presuppose what the reviewers would want to read and as such self-censored a critical motivating factor behind the project. Perhaps the prime reason for it’s existence. It is true that I do fear for the future of man, my personal idol Carl Sagan lamented that most advanced civilizations “might take billions of years of tortuous evolution to arise and then snuff themselves out in an instant of unforgivable neglect”.
Just as a coin has two sides, this project does as well. The first facet is the aforementioned concern. The second is far more intimate. I am by nature a skeptical agnostic. This has lead me to a deep contemplation of the possibility that this is the only life that I may get to live. I am driven by the unjust nature of this possibility. So much of what we do is temporary. Even monumental artistic works like the steel forms of Richard Serra will not endure for more than a few generations if not maintained. I have become, for lack of a better word, obsessed, with my own legacy.
We will very probably be defined by our distant descendants in the same way that we have defined our ancestors. Our envoy to the future, more likely than not, will be our garbage. I refuse to be solely defined by the waste of a wasteful generation. Although it would be impossible to communicate any overly detailed message on my chosen medium in a way that did not presume the use of an existing written language, I can emote my values and character through the form and content of these objects. One side of this object is dedicated to me. Is a memorial to me and my values. The idea that someone an epoch from now, could perhaps glean truth from one of my objects, and contemplate my existence gives succor to the hunger generated by the idea of eventual non-being.
Motel Litura
“Motel Litura” is three room viewing box that attempts to distort expectations.
By allowing a user to look through the peephole of a miniature door, it attempts to deliver the viewer a recreation of the nearly universal geometry of an american Motel’s layout, while turning each of the room’s walls and surfaces into a different natural environment.
The bed in one room will be a desert mesa while the TV and desk are a table rock peppered with sage and cacti. In another room a bed would be a rich coral reef, in another a stand of old growth surrounded by mountains.
Space Requirements: 4 feet wide, two feet high, by two deep. Placed flush with a wall, preferably mounted at eye level. I can provide legs if wall mounting is impractical.
Equipment: a single 110 volt outlet.
Artist Statement:
Sculpture is my method of transmogrifying thought
into hard matter. My objective as a sculptor is to develop work that has an
indescribable yet contextually appropriate thread that binds them
together. I hold no direct allegiances to material or movements, the
only loyalty I have is to the processes that will most clearly
extricate my thoughts and fantasies into tangible reality.
Conceptually I draw equally from history and popular culture to
influence the structure of my work. However the “ghosts in the
machine” that make my pieces important to me are my personal tragedies
and opulent desires.
“Wyoming Sky” Generative Code HW.WK1
I know the use of spheres as stars is not particularly economical with regards to polygon count, but I thought it was the fastest way to gain the effect I wanted considering how some of the objects were very near the camera. And the project was generative and fixed so there is no redrawing happening. If the camera had moved my guess is that this would have choked horribly at sub 10 fps. I think ultimately a single point vector line would have been the best use of my time but I could not get it to work properly within the sphere mapping function.
